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Saturday, November 26, 2011

As the title states, this "Book" from the O'Reilly collection is a compendium of dissertations covering some of the challenges and changes facing the publishing industry today, with commentary on how those changes might (or should) take place, ranging from overall conceptual shifts to specific issues of implementation.

The book itself was produced using (and as a test platform for) the new PressBooks utility, an online ebook creation and conversion tool that allows for outputting to multiple formats, including ePub, Kindle, HTML, InDesign-ready XML and print-ready PDF. While this efficient workflow is admirable in principle (and is discussed in both theory and detail in the book itself), the ebook editions I downloaded each suffer from some inconsistent (or just poor) formatting, broken external links, and at least one garbled graphic on the Kindle Fire (double tapping to zoom produced an image with full width but squashed to just a few pixels in height). I viewed the book in ePub format in iBooks (on the iPad2) and Adobe Digital Editions (PC), as well as Mobi format on both Kindle 3 and the Kindle Fire.

Currently the book contains only the first of three parts, with the next two said to be forthcoming as free "updates" for anyone who purchases part one. As each part is added the initial price will increase from its current $7.95, so getting in now guarantees the best value. However, you can also read the entire thing online for free. A print edition will be forthcoming once the book is finished.

Part 1: The Setup

As with most collections of essays, this one is a mixed bag, being aimed for the most part at medium to large scale publishing houses whose outmoded production model is currently in flux. While much of the content is of little use to indie authors and other content creators, the overall discussion of the changing landscape of publishing is informative and enlightening (if often pedantic and heavy-handed).

The opening essay in particular - "Context, Not Container" - while conceptually interesting, is nearly unreadable due to the utter tedium of its writing style and lack of a clearly stated thesis. It's a typically long-winded academic dissertation aimed at an unspecified target audience, filled with repetitive arguments and undefined terminology, which could have been said more clearly in a fraction of the space. Ultimately, it's as if we're reading an extract from a conversation for which we are not privy to the beginning, and in which a large number of us ultimately do not belong, since the subject applies only to a subset of content creators (a distinction made far more relevant and interesting in the final essay of this section by Craig Mod).

The overall concept of a broader content ecosystem that exists beyond the confines of its container makes great sense and is highly relevant to the future evolution of electronic texts; but the essay seems to place the content author at the bottom of an infinite pile, forgetting that without an artist's vision there can be no art at all. While the elements of the author's palette now extend far beyond the borders of the visible canvas, one must remember that these are all tools for the artist to use, and constitute a broader new "container," rather than the lack of one. The interconnected world is the new container.

To my mind this is an underlying flaw in the focus of the whole collection, which is aimed not so much at what can be done by content creators, but how e-production houses and aggregators can gain the most by implementing a workflow which creates the greatest efficiency and widest possible distribution to all platforms. Certainly this is a valid goal for all content, and is particularly relevant with respect to content that reflows easily, as much content does. But one of the foremost challenges facing content creators on the "bleeding edge" is in the areas where this is either undesirable, or simply not possible without destroying what the content is (i.e. as a work of art); some content simply requires a fixed state to retain its essential nature. Rethinking the container (or the canvas, as I prefer to think of it) is a fundamental shift which will be far more difficult for some than others.

However, that fundamental shift in perception is one we all will need to make, from seeing ebooks as a re-creation of what print books have been, to what ebooks can be in their new environment: the interconnected, interactive world without borders. The idea of an "infinite canvas" that stretches out endlessly in all directions from the e-reader viewport was a great revelation. Imagine, for example, the screen as a magnifying glass positioned over a giant globe - like Google Earth - that can travel in any direction endlessly, both horizontally and vertically, as well as in and out, with links like transportation hubs between distant points (this might be a great concept for an adventure novel, for example, with directional travel "paths" like an Indiana Jones vignette rather than mono-directional page turns). And those dimensions of travel are not limited in time or space: the reader's own input and interaction can effect the outcome, and alter the content itself by, for example, adding commentary or participating in an interconnected network of readers who each input information in a Wikipedia-like way. It's in ways like this that the "container" has been shattered.

These are just examples of what an ebook can be. But it's not necessarily what they should be (certainly not in all cases, at any rate). Just because the borders of the canvas can be transcended doesn't mean they must be. The iPad, for example, is a device with a specific dimension and resolution, a canvas with a frame if you will, and that in itself is a medium many artists will make great art on (and are with fixed layout epubs), entirely within those boundaries. Just because you can morph the Mona Lisa's nose doesn't make it better art than what daVinci created. And I can't imagine he would appreciate it much in any case, or think it an improvement.

So even though the lid is off, there must still be a "box" where the core content resides. Otherwise, there is no longer an author or artist, and the readers themselves become the content creators, a conceit which is flawed in its very nature, since there is no longer a place for individual authors and artists in that world, and content without a guiding creative force can only become dissipated and, ultimately, forgotten. Great works are created by great minds, not by common consensus or collating the voices of the multitudes. Art by committee is not art but socialism. By the laws of the bell chart this can only result in reduction to the average.

As for the remainder of the essays in this section of the book, most of them were only relevant to large production houses facing a major restructuring of their workflow in the digital age. There are chapters covering topics from aggregated distribution to the history of metadata and the usual concerns with DRM. Interesting, and useful to know, but nothing that hasn't been written and discussed elsewhere already.

Of most value and interest to my mind (as an author and independent publisher) were Liza Daly's essay on 'What We Can Do with "Books",' which discusses the malleable nature of the digital medium and how interactive elements can give readers a chance to participate and explore a more immersive text in a real and focused way. The idea of a book as a living document, for example, that can be updated automatically in revised editions like software upgrades is intriguing. This very book is an example of that, with additions coming later this year. I recently read about an author who is selling the first chapter of her book for .99 cents, with additional chapters to be added as completed for no additional charge, simply by updating the retailer-hosted file. This not only gives her an income during the writing process (sort of an advance for the self-pub ebook era), but also allows her readers to offer feedback that she can incorporate into the story as it progresses. That's very much the idea I had in mind as I've posted up the pages and completed chapters of my current Ring Saga project for readers to peruse (albeit without any real feedback aside from friends so far, so at this point it's pretty much a failed experiment, but it may yet grow as time goes on).

Very much related to this is Craig Mod's insightful analysis of the "post-artifact" landscape of content creation. As mentioned earlier, I found this of particular value, with its discussion of the more direct interaction that can now be had between the author and the reader (theoretically at least, although he mentions more successful examples than mine), due to the narrowing and overlap of creation and distribution phases of content creation itself. The book is worth purchasing (or reading online at any rate) for this essay alone. It is a well-crafted piece of analysis with clearly defined concepts, into which a lot of thought and originality has gone. Would that all the essays included were as well written.

The overall impression the "Book" gives is not just of an industry in turmoil, but of a cultural icon and symbol of human progress undergoing a fundamental change. And that says a lot about who we are, and where we're going.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

At long last, it's finally here...I've been waiting for the Windows version of Scrivener to come out for well over a year now, having received outstanding reviews from a number of writer friends who are fortunate enough to have used the Mac version for several years. With Word becoming increasingly bloated with features few novelists would ever use, and none of those they really need, Microsoft's Office suite has become more and more a business person's tool and far less helpful for creative endeavors. I actually deleted my copy of Office 2010 (version 14) in favor of the far more streamlined and efficient Office XP (version 10), albeit with an added plug-in to allow me to read .docx files I get sent. Scrivener is what Word should have become. And for those of us who are Windows-bound it's been a long time coming.

Scrivener is a "complete writing studio" - an all-encompassing creation tool and project manager that houses a wide range of disparate elements all geared toward the organization and development of creative writing projects, with particular benefits for those that are long and complex. As you can see from the image above, there is a corkboard which replicates an index card system, but with the benefits of electronic manipulation of both content and order: they can be rearranged with ease, blown up for easier viewing, and customized to your heart's desire.

There are linked outlining tools that access and compile all your research notes and files, including audio/video and web documents, creating a central hub where all your reference sources are readily available. Scrivener can even temporarily combine multiple documents for viewing and editing as a single cohesive whole, while saving each piece separately. Using the outline tools allows you to rearrange these pieces easily using drag and drop. These organization tools are far more powerful and useful than those in Word, with visual elements that let you color-code and see the bigger picture at a glance.

At its heart, of course, is a simple, but powerful word processor with all the formatting options you'll ever need. It will even convert your story into script format, or mix formats for writing rough draft treatments. Statistics show your progress for both overall and session word-count targets. It even has a name generator to help with character creation. And finally, it will export your document to both ePub and Kindle formats, as well as Word, RTF, PDF and HTML for external editing or file sharing.﻿﻿

My current "organization system"

I'm looking forward to importing my current notes and outlines into Scrivener and getting down to work on that final draft, but I sure wish I had had it six months ago when I was working on the outline and the first draft.

You can download a free trial version of Scrivener for Windows or Mac OS X here.﻿﻿﻿

Monday, November 7, 2011

The tablet wars officially began today as Barnes & Noble fired a warning shot across the bow of Amazon's flagship tablet, the Kindle Fire. Making a number of direct comparisons to their arch-competitor, B&N CEO William Lynch came out with guns blazing, stating that the new Nook Tablet has "seven times more storage capacity" than the Kindle Fire, is "faster", and has the first "no air gap" screen!

Say what?

You mean my 1024 x 768 9.7" iPad screen really sucks because it has an air gap? Bummer. I guess I better toss that piece of crap out and get a 7" 1024 x 600 Nook Tablet instead. Yeah, it's 169-ppi instead of 132 (as if that really makes a big difference), but what I want to know is how exactly does 1080p HD streaming work on a screen that's only 1024 pixels wide? And wait a minute, isn't the Kindle Fire's screen also 1024 x 600 @ 169-ppi resolution, just like the Nook? But oh, if only it wasn't for that crappy air gap!

And let me get this straight, 16Gb versus 8Gb of onboard storage is ... how much? ... 7 times more capacity? That must make the Nook Tablet's $249 price tag about seven times more expensive than the $199 Kindle Fire. And how exactly is the Nook's 1GHz dual-core processor "faster" than the Fire's exact same specs? Especially when a hands-on review over at Gizmondoshowed the new Nook's performance to be sluggish and lagging in both the browser and the interface, while the Kindle Fire was smooth and smoking fast.

Here's a handy comparison chart for those of you who want a side-by-side lineup of features...

The only real advantage I can see to the Nook over the Kindle is the microSD card slot, which will allow for added storage portability and rooting to a full Android OS (with access to the Android app store). But with cloud storage onboard memory is rapidly becoming irrelevant, so that content availability is really of "Prime" importance here, and in that department Amazon wins hands down. Barnes & Noble can only claim to be the "biggest bookstore in the world" because they have brick and mortar stores as well as an online website. But fewer and fewer people are shopping in those physical stores, which is why they've recently jettisoned their entire DVD/Audiobook departments - in favor of ... what? ... toys and games?! How exactly is that helpful in advancing their digital platform?

But here's the real qualm: whereas with Amazon you can get video streaming, free monthly ebook rentals, and free two-day shipping all for $79 per year, Barnes and Noble is somehow touting "access" to their new "content partnerships" with Netflix, Hulu, and Rhapsody as bonus perks of their device. Seriously? So paying $7.99 a month for Netflix streaming ($95 a year for access to a truly lamemovie selection), and another $7.99 a month for Hulu Plus so that I can watch television shows that I can DVR already (that's $190 a year now), plus $9.99 a month for Rhapsody (an additional $120/year) so I can listen to music I can listen to for free with Pandora or will likely buy on iTunes anyway if I like it. Where exactly is the advantage for me here? Do they have any kind of book programs on this thing?

Oh, yeah, they were the first ones to do ebook lending. There's a plus. Except that Amazon now does it better with a variety of lending programs in place (not to mention the handful of third-party sites that mediate the Kindle lending process). If B&N was first then why aren't there a dozen Nook eBook lending sites out there somewhere? The answer: because Barnes & Noble's 27% of the eBook market still pales in comparison to Amazon's 66% - and that's where size really matters. The square footage of your buildings and warehouses matters not a whit if someone else's warehouses are doing more business. Biggest bookstore in the world? I don't think so.

Still, another factor might be important to consider here, and that's the Nook's native ePub support. Whereas Amazon's main format is proprietary, ePubs are open source and quickly becoming universal. In a way it boggles me that Amazon has been able to make its restricted ebooks the dominant format in the market. But that just goes to show you the power of a dominant device. Barnes & Noble has a lot of ground to make up if it plans to overtake the Kindle as an e-reading leader, and I really have to question whether this new Nook line is anywhere near enough to close the gap (unless it's an air gap, that is - honestly, is anybody buying that line? Is anyone really going to look at the Nook and go, "Oh my God, look! There's no air gap!!! How awesome is that?!").

But really when it comes right down to it there's only one comparison that shoppers are going to make, and that's the $249 price tag versus $199. Because when it comes to dollars and cents, there's just no comparison.